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S- ''K 



THAT HUMAN BEING, 
LEONARD WOOD 

BY 

HERMANN HAGEDORN 



" All of us who give service, and stand ready for 
sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with 
the torches until we fall, content if we can 
then pass them to the hands of other runners." 
Theodore Roosevelt 



u 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 

1920 



. wS^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. 



m - i ^^^ 



THE QUINN a BODEN COMPANY 
RAHWAY. N. J. 



©nf.A57)5740 



dTo 

HAROLD PULSIFER 



NOTE 

For much of the biographical material 
which Is the basis of this sketch the author 
is indebted to General Wood himself and to 
members of his staff, notably Colonel E. H. 
Humphrey and Colonel John C. H. Lee; to 
Mrs. Sara L. Beckwith, of the Bureau of 
Insular Affairs in Washington, Mr. Herbert 
L. Statesir, of the War Department, and 
Major Edward Clark; and to Mr. Wilson L. 
Gill, under whose direction the " school city " 
project was established in Cuban schools; as 
well as to the authors of various books 
and magazine articles dealing with General 
Wood's character and career, especially Mr. 
Ray Stannard Baker, Mr. Joseph Hamblen 
Sears and Mr. John G. Holme. For the 
guidance or active assistance which each gave 
him, the author desires to express his warm 
appreciation. 

H.H. 

New York, March i, 1920. 



THAT HUMAN BEING, 
LEONARD WOOD 



WHAT, in the name of things wiser 
than dictionaries, is a human 
being? 

The theories of the dictionaries on the 
subject are vague and general. They 
imply that all things that clothe their 
means of locomotion in trousers or skirts 
are human beings; all things that eat and 
sleep and have the capacity to grumble; 
that worry and stew and tyrannize and 
procrastinate; that reason and spout 
rhetoric; that sentimentalize and con- 
fuse; that smile and hate and are gra- 
cious, and pray and preach and bear 
watching. The dictionaries are wrong. 
3 



Leonard Wood 

There have been creatures who have 
done all those things, and still have not 
been human; there have been kings and 
potentates who have done stranger things, 
standing astride of oceans, for instance, 
and juggling nations like little colored 
balls in the air; and they have not been 
human beings at all. 

What then makes a being human? 

It is understanding; first of all and 
last of all, it is understanding. It is 
not book-learning, it is not even wisdom, 
for the sage who wrote the proverb, urg- 
ing man to " get wisdom," urged in the 
same breath, " and with all thy getting, 
get understanding." It is humility that 
makes a being human, humility born of 
mistakes and frailties and failings and 
defeats; it is knowledge of men and of 
the strange twistings and turnings, the 
curious contradictions of baseness and 
splendor, in the hearts of men, that makes 



Leonard Wood 

a being human. It is the sympathy, born 
of such knowledge, and the tenderness 
born of sympathy; it is a sense of humor; 
it is respect for facts and scorn for self- 
delusion; it is all these things, comprised 
in the one thing — understanding — that 
makes a being human. 

Explain understanding and you ex- 
plain what constitutes the difference be- 
tween an intellectual mechanism and a 
human being. A man, asked to define 
the word, might echo the reply of a 
certain statesman, asked to define an 
" overt act " — '^ I don't know what it is 
but I think I shall be able to recognize 
it when I see it." Understanding is 
known best by the way it draws to it the 
struggling and bewildered hearts of men. 

" If I were on a schooner in a hurri- 
cane with the seas like mountains around, 
and I were to grope my way in panic out 

5 



Leonard Wood 

of bed and across the deck to the man at 
the wheel, and were to look under his 
sou'wester and discover it was Leonard 
Wood, I'd say, ' Oh, it's all right then! ' 
and go to bed again and rest easy. 
That's the way I feel about Leonard 
Wood." 

So one man spoke; so, millions, de- 
pendent on his vigilance and strength in 
remote corners of the world, have seemed 
to feel in years past; so, men and women, 
in numbers not yet to be estimated, seem 
to feel in his own country to-day. 

Who is this man, Leonard Wood? 
What has he done? What manner of 
man is he? What qualities does he pos- 
sess that make thousands of men and 
women turn to him for leadership with 
fervor and trust? Is he a real leader or 
is he merely the shadow of Roosevelt, 
his friend? Is he a real statesman or is 
he merely a well-advertised child of 
6 



Leonard Wood 

fortune? Is he a real man or is he a 
stuffed club? 
Let us see. 

His photographs are against him, for 
his photographs, with few exceptions, 
show his face in repose, and his face in 
repose is not the man at all, but a mask 
for a grim animal known as a general, 
worn as he wears his two stars, as a part 
of the uniform, a symbol of determina- 
tion, more useful than many orations in 
making clear to an army of happy-go- 
lucky doughboys the elementary rules 
of the game. At its grimmest — and it is 
generally at its grimmest facing the 
camera — the mask is something to 
frighten babies with, and to horrify the 
dyspeptic with suggestions of platforms 
advocating the use of brass tacks in hash 
and of cayenne-pepper in tea. The jaw 
has a terrifying strength; the firm, 

7 



Leonard IVood 

straight mouth, the small and distant 
eyes, the whole Gibraltar-like solidity of 
the depicted features, suggest a Rus- 
sian imperial governor preparing for the 
daily massacre, or a Japanese Elder 
Statesman about to annex the world. 

Behind the mask the real man lives his 
varied and colorful life, doing three 
days' work in one with a minimum of 
noise and the energy of thirty-five ; grave, 
patient, humorous, tender, with a for- 
bearance that seems inexhaustible; 
tolerant, considerate, humble; capable 
of annihilating with a glance or a sud- 
den, sharp word, but vastly preferring 
conciliation on a basis of give and take 
to the easier solution of brute force; a 
devoted husband, father and friend; a 
magnetic leader, who binds his sub- 
ordinates to him by his sense of justice, 
his consideration, his confidence, his 
open mind and his sheer lovableness, 
8 



Leonard Wood 

and disarms his opponents by the pa- 
tience of his search for facts and his 
eagerness to understand and to be under- 
stood. 

The world knows the mask; only his 
friends and close associates know the 
real human being that is Leonard Wood. 

^^ He is just like a chestnut-bur," said 
one who for years had known him better 
possibly than almost any one else. " All 
spines outside, but so soft and tender at 
heart." 

The outside of the bur is the Elder 
Statesman who poses for photographs; 
the inside of the bur is the delightful 
companion of a small circle who smiles 
with a whimsical, boyish air and de- 
velops a double chin when he chuckles. 

Physically, he is just under six feet, 
deep-chested and solid. His face is the 
color of pink granite and suggests gran- 
ite in other ways, being rugged and 

9 



Leonard Wood 

deeply marked. The eyes are the clean 
blue of a windswept sky; the nose is 
broad and dominant; the mouth like a 
statue's in repose and full of life and 
individuality in speech. His close- 
cropped mustache is gray; but his hair 
is sandy-colored and young-looking. His 
voice is low. He is sparing with words. 
He reads without glasses. His left leg is 
stiff, owing to an injury received in 
Cuba, and he walks with a rolling gait 
like a sea-captain who has learnt to 
negotiate any sea. 

His life is mainly work and his work 
is mainly service. He is out of bed 
early, at six or five or four-thirty, and 
reads or rides before breakfast, works all 
day and reads, when he can, at night. 
He eats moderately and, true to his sea- 
faring ancestors, can and likes to live on 
sardines. Now and then he forgets that 
lunch is a part of the normal human 

lO 



Leonard Wood 

schedule. He is difficult to tire out, 
owing partly to his magnificent health 
and robust physique and partly to his 
ability to sleep anywhere at any time at a 
moment's notice. He has been known to 
work eighteen hours, sleep two, and work 
eighteen more. Whenever possible, he 
fills the empty minute with sleep in order 
that the full minute shall have every 
ounce of his energy. 

He is a great nature lover, distinctly 
an outdoor man; and he has to-day the 
physical vigor of manhood in its prime, 
because he has all his life made it a 
part of the day's work to keep the body 
in trim. His bouts at singlestick with 
President Roosevelt are ancient history; 
but he has his bouts at singlestick to- 
day. He boxes, he rows, he rides. When 
he rows, he rows twelve or fifteen miles ; 
when he rides, he rides some large- 
boned hunter who makes him work. At 
II 



Leonard Wood 

Camp Funston, he used to go through 
a program of athletic '^ stunts " nightly 
with the officers of his staff, stripping 
off his coat, a match for the hardiest. 
There was one " stunt " in which he was 
the champion. With his forearm rest- 
ing upright on the table and his fist 
clenched, he challenged the men of his 
staff to budge it. They tried it in suc- 
cession and failed; whereupon they sent 
for outside talent. The strong men of 
the 89th Division, the farmers, the black- 
smiths, the coal-heavers, were requisi- 
tioned; but without result. The Gen- 
eraPs arm remained unmoved and im- 
movable. 

He has no dominant tastes except for 
his friends, his work, his books and his 
dogs. He loves dogs, '' any kind of dogs 
that have golden hearts," mongrel pups 
and foundlings left on his doorstep, pre- 
ferred. He smokes moderately and, in 
12 



Leonard Wood 

the days before the Long Drought, drank 
his glass of wine in the same fashion. 
His musical ear is about as sensitive as 
was that of Colonel Roosevelt, who 
boasted that he could tell the difference 
between " Yankee Doodle " and the 
" Star-Spangled Banner," but admitted 
that all other delicate distinctions of 
sound were beyond his grasp. He de- 
tests problem plays and cares little for 
plays in general, but is better than the 
show itself at a good comedy which hap- 
pens to kindle his risibilities. He reads 
steadily, widely and intelligently, mainly 
history and government; but knows 
English literature thoroughly and Span- 
ish literature just as well. He speaks 
Spanish fluently and has struck thirteen 
more than once in Spain and in South 
America by his ability to address gather- 
ings in the language of the country. His 
French makes up in enthusiasm for what 

13 



Leonard Wood 

it lacks in technical exactness. ^* Mar- 
shal Joffre, sitting between Roosevelt and 
Wood at a banquet in New York," a 
friend of all three men reported, 
" seemed lost between bewilderment and 
hilarity as he heard his native tongue 
tortured to death on his right hand and 
murdered in cold blood on his left." 

His writing, like his talk, is clear, terse 
and almost abrupt. When his heart is 
not in it, it has a tendency to be a bit 
heavy-footed ; but when his emotions are 
kindled the words burn and sweep along 
in a rhythmic prose that has the sincerity 
and simplicity of authentic literature and 
is as easy to understand as the Ten Com- 
mandments. His demobilization order 
to the loth Division and his farewell to 
the men of the 89th, known as " Wood's 
Orphans," when they embarked without 
him for France, have in their hundred or 
two hundred words the surcharged qual- 

14 



Leonard Wood 

ity of great orations. As an impromptu 
speaker he is effective but not compel- 
ling. Audiences listen to him because 
they like what he says; not because he 
has any of the arts of the spellbinder. 
He is impressive because he is sincere. 
He kindles men not by showering them 
with sparks but by bringing them into 
contact, as it were, with the fierce heat of 
his own convictions. 



IS 



II 

50 much for the man, Leonard Wood, 
as he walks and talks in Chicago or 
flashes for a hectic day through New 
York, or sets on edge the teeth of a 
nervous and somewhat emaciated, elderly 
Administration where she rocks at a 
window in Washington, conscious that 
fall is in the air. 

" A vivid personality," agrees the 
gentleman from Missouri. *' I didn't 
realize how much of a human being he 
was. I admit I was fooled by the mask. 
But a vivid personality may make a 
mighty poor executive. How does he 
handle himself in a crisis? You talk of 
conciliation, of seeking to understand 
and to be understood. If I know 
Leonard Wood he prefers the meat-ax." 
i6 



Leonard Wood 

Let us see. 

In the autumn of 191 9, four hundred 
thousand workingmen threw down 
their tools in the steel mills of the 
country and went on strike. Violence 
was threatened; here and there actual 
violence occurred. Leonard Wood, com- 
manding general of the Army in the 
Central Department, covering a terri- 
tory as large as Europe, set his troops 
in readiness and waited for the telephone 
to ring. 

Early in October it rang. The Gov- 
ernor of Indiana feared mob violence in 
Gary and wanted a regiment there to 
preserve law and order. General Wood 
replied that the regiment would be sent. 
Fifteen minutes later the men were fall- 
ing into line. The General announced 
that he himself would go and take charge 
of the situation. 

There was a scurrying and a wild con- 
17 



Leonard Wood 

ferring among the General's political 
supporters when the news was noised 
abroad. Frantic appeals came over the 
telephone from various parts of the city. 

'' Don't go to Gary! " his friends pro- 
tested. " That strike situation has too 
much dynamite in it. As a candidate 
for President you haven't the right to 
risk it. Send some subordinate. If you 
go to Gary, sure as you're born, you'll 
have to shoot a lot of people and that 
will be the end of you." 

His jaw seemed to settle into place. 
" All right," he answered, looking for 
all the world like an unhappy but reso- 
lute old Roman about to slay his only 
daughter. " If it's the end of me, it's 
the end of me and there's nothing more 
to be said. But I won't send a sub- 
ordinate down there, and then, if things 
go wrong, protect myself by making a 
subordinate carry the blame." 
i8 



Ljeonard Wood 

He went. The dynamite was there, it 
was there in quantities to make the ordi- 
nary man with political ambitions and 
an eye for political consequences quake 
in his boots. But somehow it did not go 
off. General Wood did not seem to say 
very much; he did not appear to be 
doing very much. But the news which 
every one was expecting from that turbu- 
lent strike-center did not '' break." Gary, 
which had exhibited symptoms of incipi- 
ent chaos, suddenly quieted down and 
slipped out of the news entirely. 

What had happened? The representa- 
tives of the press, cooling their heels in 
the corridor outside the office of the 
Mayor of Gary, never had an inkling of 
it. General Wood did not invite them 
to his dramatic little party inside, and 
they missed a gorgeous opportunity to 
see how a human being could, by his 
very humanness, dominate a critical 

19 



Leonard Wood 

situation. It was the General's chief of 
staff who afterwards told the story. 

General Wood arrived in Gary ahead 
of the troops, at seven o'clock in the 
evening, and proceeded at once to the 
Mayor's office. An ugly crowd filled the 
streets outside the City Hall, evidently 
strikers. He noticed several men who 
were in uniform, and turned to his aide. 
" Ask those service men to come to see 
me," he said quietly. 

In the Mayor's office, the leading 
town officials were gathered. 

'^ Tell me the situation," said the Gen- 
eral. 

The Mayor explained it at length. 
The strike-leaders, themselves, it seemed, 
were reasonable men. The real source 
of trouble were certain agitators, who 
were the leaders of a small radical group 
who had gained an unsavory reputation 
during the War and were now spurring 
20 



Leonard Wood 

the strikers to violence. The General sent 
for the labor leaders and for one of the 
agitators. 

Twenty minutes later, he had all the 
factors in the situation before him — the 
town officials, representing law and 
order; the agitator, representing vio- 
lence; the labor leaders, representing the 
strikers; and the three men in uniform 
out of the crowd, representing the flag. 

" I am about to issue a proclamation," 
he said, standing before them, " and I 
want you all to hear it and to understand 
the situation." Then he dictated a state- 
ment forbidding parades and public as- 
semblages in the streets and the carrying 
of firearms; and laying down certain 
regulations regarding men in uniform. 
Theaters, lecture halls, moving-picture 
places and other well-conducted places 
of amusement, he declared, should con- 
tinue as usual. 

21 



Leonard Wood 

" You have heard what will be ex- 
pected of the citizens of Gary," he con- 
cluded. *^ The regulations laid down in 
this proclamation are all that there are. 
There will be no secret instructions." 

Thereupon he sent the statement to 
the press and turned to the eldest of the 
three service men. If the man expected 
to be " blown up," he was disappointed. 
" Corporal," said the General in the tone 
of one seeking information, " you knew 
that the Mayor of Gary had forbidden 
the strikers to parade. Why were you and 
these other service men in that crowd, 
and why were you in uniform? " 

" We put on our uniforms, sir," the 
corporal answered, ^^ because we wanted 
to hold the crowd down to an orderly 
meeting and keep them from burning the 
plant or the city as some of them were 
out to do. And we thought our uniforms 
might help." 

22 



Leonard Wood 

"Are you strikers? " 

" Yes, sir." The man lifted his head. 
" But we are Americans first." 

The GeneraFs face cleared. " Good! " 
he exclaimed. ^' I congratulate you. 
YouVe got the right point of view. 
Are you members of the American 
Legion? " 

" Yes, sir." 

"That's fine! I suggest that you call 
a meeting of your post and make it gen- 
erally known that you stand for law and 
order and propose to support the authori- 
ties." 

"We have called a meeting for to- 
night, sir." 

" Good. Tell the men that I should 
be glad to have their help in keeping 
order in Gary. All who volunteer will 
be sworn in as deputy sheriffs." 

Then the General turned to the labor 
leaders. There were three of them pres- 
23 



Leonard vvood 

ent. The General addressed the one who 
was evidently the spokesman. 

"Mr. Anderson," he said, " you repre- 
sent the strikers, I understand. I want 
to make one thing clear to you and to the 
workers you represent. I want you to 
understand that the military forces are 
in Gary not in the interest of the steel 
operators and not in the interest of the 
strikers, but to maintain law and order. 
In our official capacity we are not in- 
terested whether the strike continues or 
not. We may have our personal opin- 
ions, but these do not affect our actions. 
The military forces of the United States 
represent the government of the United 
States, and between operators and 
strikers, the government of the United 
States is absolutely neutral. We are here 
to maintain law and order. We are here 
to see that the citizens of Gary are pro- 
tected in their peaceful pursuits and that 

24 



Leonard Wood 

individual and property rights, under 
the law, of the striking employees of the 
steel mills are protected, as well as 
the rights of other citizens and of the 
Steel Corporation." 

" General," said the strike leader, 
" that's fair enough. That's just what 
we want. We have no kick against the 
troops being in Gary. We're glad they're 
here because we believe that under your 
orders they'll give us square treatment. 
Now what about picketing? " 

The General's answer carqe quick and 
clear. *^ Picketing in reasonable num- 
bers is permissible. Mr. Anderson, I 
mean by that, that your picketing must 
consist of offering arguments, remon- 
strances, anything of that kind which you 
may want to offer to the workers in the 
steel mills to bring them round to your 
point of view. But in no circumstances 
must you offer them personal violence, 

25 



Leonard Wood 

nor must you use threats. I say reason- 
able numbers, and by that I mean that 
you may have two or three men in one 
part of the street and two or three twenty 
or thirty yards away, and so on." 

" I get you, General. What about 
picketing at the gates?'' 

" You may have a small party on 
picket duty at the gates. I say * reason- 
able number ' and restrict you to small 
parties not because I do not have abso- 
lute confidence in you and your associates 
to help us keep order, but because I am 
afraid that if these parties are allowed 
to consist of a considerable number of 
men they are liable to contain some 
elements that stand for disorder and I 
am afraid, Mr. Anderson, that you will 
not be able to control your own people." 

" I see the point. How about meet- 
ings?" 

" Have all you want. It's your consti- 
26 



1 



Leonard Wood 

tutional right. But have them indoors 
and don't let any one preach sedition. 
The reason I don't want you to hold 
them outdoors is because outdoor meet- 
ings cannot be controlled by the men in 
charge of them. You can have any one 
you want to address your meetings. But 
you will be personally responsible that 
no disorder occurs and that nothing is 
said advocating the overthrow of Ameri- 
can institutions." 

There was one man who stood a little 
apart from the others, apart from the 
town officials, apart from the service men, 
apart from the labor leaders. His ex- 
pression left no doubt that he was fully 
aware of the drift of the conversation. 

The General turned to him with finger 
pointed. " You," he said sharply, " you 
have come to this country to find a free- 
dom which was denied you in the land 
of your birth. You have established 
27 



Leonard Wood 

yourself here and, I understand, have 
built up a lucrative business. You are a 
man of some education and should 
know better than to use your talents for 
the purpose of stirring up people, who 
do not understand our language or our 
institutions, to violence against our gov- 
ernment. You have done everything in 
your power to overthrow the system of 
law and order which gave you the oppor- 
tunity to live and work and prosper to 
any extent that your native abilities per- 
mitted. I want you to understand clearly 
that you stand here to-day under a mili- 
tary regime which has just been insti- 
tuted for the purpose of maintaining law 
and order. If during the time the mili- 
tary are in control, you utter or publish 
inflammatory matter tending to stir up 
these people to the point where they dis- 
regard law and order and resort to vio- 
lence, you will be promptly suppressed 
28 



Leonard Wood 

and, if necessary, shot. Do you under- 
stand?" 

The man looked up into the General's 
face. " Yes, sir," he said in subdued 
tones. 

" That's all," said the General. " You 
can go." 

The sinister little man slipped from 
the room, and the General, undisguisedly 
glad that he was gone, passed round the 
semicircle, shaking hands warmly with 
each man. 

" Is everything clear as far as you men 
are concerned? " 

The men nodded their heads. 

" I am here to maintain law and order, 
and law and order are going to be main- 
tained. Don't you want to help maintain 
them yourselves? " 

"Yes, sirl" 

"Yes, General!" 

"You bet you 1" 

29 



Leonard Wood 

" You are simply American citizens 
protecting your own homes. I want you 
to know that the military want conflict 
less than anybody. I hope there will be 
no trouble, now that we understand each 
other." 

The men filed out of the room. From 
the streets came the sound of rolling 
trucks. The troops were arriving in the 
city. But there was nothing but patrol 
duty for them to do. No shot was fired 
during the military occupation of Gary. 

Leonard Wood had made shooting 
unnecessary. 



30 



Ill 

THE thing that turned the trick at 
Gary and, in the very face of chaos, 
laid the foundation of a deeper apprecia- 
tion of the dtities of government, on the 
one hand, and of the loyalty and reason- 
ableness of labor on the other, was real 
statesmanship ; and it was that most effec- 
tive form of statesmanship which is 
based on the qualities which differentiate 
an intellectual apparatus from a human 
being. General Wood wanted to under- 
stand; and he wanted to be understood. 
He questioned, he explained; and with 
sure steps, leaving no issues vague, he 
proceeded from point to point until, for 
all, the situation was clarified, and every 
one knew exactly what he could do and 
what he could not do. 

31 



Leonard Wood 

There were no cloudy generalizations 
to bewilder and confuse. The General 
talked a language which the common 
man could comprehend. 

*'What is General Wood's attitude 
toward union labor? " asked a laboring 
man in the course of a meeting in Chicago 
of Lodge No. 83 of the Switchmen of 
North America, a week or ten days after 
General Wood came to Gary. 

John Fitzpatrick, president of the 
Chicago Federation of Labor and organ- 
izer of the Gary strike, answered the ques- 
tion. " I'll tell you about General Wood's 
attitude toward union labor," he said. '* I 
called on the General to negotiate for an 
outdoor labor meeting at Gary. The 
General gave the permission at once, and 
he did more than that. He helped me to 
find a good place to hold the meeting. 
He said that he wanted to give the strikers 
a square deal and that any time I wanted 

32 



Leonard Wood 

to have another meeting in Gary, he 
would be glad to give the necessary 
authority, providing the meeting was 
conducted by a responsible man who 
would guarantee that no inflammatory 
speeches would be made or anything said 
against the United States government. 
I hand it to him. There's nothing wrong 
with General Wood's attitude toward 
union labor." 

And the " Central Labor News " of 
Gary, rejoicing at the " square deal " that 
labor had received, remarked, " It just 
only goes to show that a head is advisable 
in cases of strife. When one has a head 
that is trained and fair no one can help 
but be gratified." 

" A disposition to preserve," says 
Burke, " and an ability to improve, taken 
together, would be my standard of a 



statesman." 



33 



Leonard Wood 

The crisis at Gary revealed not only 
Wood's '' disposition " but also his ability 
to '' preserve." What of his disposition 
and his ability to ''improve"? 

In plain English, what qualities of 
constructive statesmanship does he pos- 
sess? Let us see. 

The American forces captured Santi- 
ago de Cuba in July, 1898. Two weeks 
later, Leonard Wood, who had dis- 
tinguished himself in the organization of 
the Rough Riders and had proved a cool- 
headed commander in the field, was 
appointed Military Governor of that out- 
wardly beautiful and inwardly loathsome 
pest-house of southeastern Cuba. 

The condition of Santiago, when Gen- 
eral Wood assumed command, was al- 
most beyond belief. " You could smell 
it ten miles at sea," an old sea-captain 
declared. The buzzards fed on the 
corpses in the streets; in the prison-pits, 

34 



Leonard Wood 

men and women, the sane and the mad, 
the quick and the dead, the innocent and 
the guilty, lay in a horrible jumble of 
reeking humanity. There were no doc- 
tors, there was no sanitation. Men died in 
the streets and were left to the dogs be- 
cause the living were too weak to bury 
them. There was no government, there 
were no law courts, there were no police. 
It was a desperately sick city, and 
Leonard Wood the physician set himself 
to bring it back to health. He cremated 
the dead ; for the fever-stricken he estab- 
lished hospitals; and every human crea- 
ture, man, woman or child, that could 
stagger about on its own legs he set to 
work to purge and disinfect the city. 
He himself cleared out the prisons, day 
after day sitting in judgment, as the poor 
wretches, imprisoned years before at the 
whim of some Spanish Governor Gen- 
eral who had long ago sailed for home 

35 



Leonard Wood 

and forgotten their existence, were 
brought to the light of day for trial, and 
freedom. He was everywhere at once, 
working through countless subordinates, 
yet seeming to give to each detail his 
personal touch; everlastingly busy, car- 
rying in his head a dozen constructive 
projects, yet always, it seemed, accessible; 
now in his office, working out a code of 
law for the province, now on the street, 
suddenly alighting from his horse and 
showing a clumsy wielder of a bamboo 
broom that it is easier to sweep downhill 
than up. 

" I was frequently in Santiago after 
the surrender," said Theodore Roosevelt 
later, " and I never saw Wood when he 
was not engaged on some one of his mul- 
titudinous duties. He was personally 
inspecting the hospitals; he was per- 
sonally superintending the cleaning of 
the streets; he was personally hearing the 

36 



Leonard Wood 

most important of countless complaints 
made by Cubans against Spaniards, 
Spaniards against Cubans, and by both 
against Americans; he was personally en- 
gaged in working out a better system of 
sewerage; or in striving to secure the 
return of the land tillers to the soil. I do 
not mean he ever allowed himself to be 
swamped by mere detail ; he is much too 
good an executive officer not to delegate 
to others whatever can safely be dele- 
gated; but the extraordinary energy of 
the man is such that he can in person 
oversee and direct much more than is 
possible with the ordinary man." 

" Organization is the simplest thing in 
the world," said Leonard Wood, " if you 
will just build your house before you try 
to place the bric-a-brac on the mantel." 

Leonard Wood was in Santiago as 
Governor for a matter of sixteen months. 
During that time he cleaned and drained 

37 



Leonard Wood 

a city which had never dreamed of sanita- 
tion before, reducing the daily death rate 
from two hundred to ten, superintended 
the distribution of rations, stamped out 
two or three epidemics and built countless 
hospitals, administered justice, worked 
out a code of laws based on the best in 
the American and Spanish systems, de- 
vised a scheme of finance, instituted a 
criminal and civil judiciary, a new 
public school system, and a systerti of 
taxation; paved streets and built high- 
ways, dredged the harbor, built light- 
houses, increased the city's water supply; 
launched an engineering project for 
draining the malarial swamps near the 
city and established municipal govern- 
ments throughout the province, paying 
all the expenses out of the ordinary reve- 
nues that he collected and actually laying 
aside a matter of fifty thousand dollars a 
month. " It was," in the words of a 

38 



Leonard Wood 

contemporary, ^' the tour de force of a 
man of genius."" He called the food 
profiteers together, talked to them and 
sent prices tumbling seventy-five per cent; 
set the press free to abuse him at its 
own sweet will; governed openly and 
honestly; and became the idol of the 
province. 

" It was not so much what General 
Wood did in Santiago as what he was," 
said a shrewd observer. " He stood for 
Americanism. For years the Cubans had 
been looking to the great nation of the 
North for succor in their struggle. They 
had at last been rescued, and the Span- 
iards had been driven from the Island. 
Their ideal of the bravery, the honesty, 
the power, the wisdom of the American 
was high. He must be everything which 
the Spanish oppressor was not. And 
here they had General Wood, the Ameri- 
can. He was calm, firm, simple, accessi- 
39 



Leonard Wood 

ble to poor as well as to rich. He was 
direct and absolutely truthful in what he 
said. He had none of the airs of the 
Spanish governors — a sturdy man in a 
khaki suit, who went ever)rwhere, saw 
everything, and could be neither flat- 
tered, nor cajoled, nor deceived." 

He governed by "horse sense" and a 
shrewd knowledge of human nature. 
One of his chief difficulties, it happened, 
was the unwillingness of the better class 
of Cubans to co-operate in the civil 
government. For one reason and another 
they sulked and hung back, complaining 
that too many of the minor positions 
had been given to Spaniards. In a small 
town near Santiago, Wood was particu- 
larly anxious to secure a good Cuban 
Mayor. He threw out intimations to 
that effect, but word came back to him 
that none of the men he considered avail- 
able would dream of taking the post. 
40 



Leonard Wood 

One day, the principal storekeeper of 
the town in question came to the Gov- 
ernor's Palace to see about a small con- 
tract for fodder. After concluding the 
business matter, the General pretended to 
consult a letter. 

" By the way, senor," he remarked, 
" you are an old resident of this country 
and perhaps you could give me a little 
advice." 

The storekeeper visibly expanded and 
assured his Excellency that he was at his 
Excellency's service. 

" Is it true then," Wood continued, 
" that the Cuban gentlemen are very in- 
differently educated and are afraid to 
accept civil offices for fear of appearing 
to disadvantage in comparison with the 
Spanish employees?" 

The Cuban blew up with a roar. 

" Ah, well," said the General quietly 
when the storekeeper's harangue in de- 

41 



Leonard Wood 

fense of his countrymen was over at last, 
*^ I merely wanted your opinion and I 
am sure I am very much obliged. 
You'll consider this conversation private, 
of course? " 

The storekeeper swore that he would, 
but as the General had anticipated, he 
told the whole town. A few days later 
one of the leading Cuban citizens was 
appointed Mayor, and promptly ac- 
cepted. 

Wood kept his troops altogether in 
the background, exterminating the ban- 
dits who infested the province with the 
Cuban rural guards which he estab- 
lished, and keeping order less with a 
show of force than by virtue of his own 
calm and steady strength. 

It happened one night that a mob of 

five hundred or more Cubans, caught 

by a wave of recurrent hatred of the 

Spaniard, surrounded the Spanish Club 

■^^ 42 



Leonard Wood 

and started to bombard it with bottles 
and bricks. A breathless messenger 
rushed to the Palace sentry and a breath- 
less sentry rushed to the Governor. 

He found him leisurely folding up his 
papers. " I have heard the rov^," the 
General remarked quietly before the 
man had time to speak. " We will go 
over and stop it." 

He picked up his riding-whip, the 
only weapon he ever carried, and, accom- 
panied only by the sentry, strolled across 
the square to the scene of hostilities. The 
Spanish Club was in a state of siege, 
with the excited Cubans throwing mis- 
siles of all sorts through the shattered 
panes, and trying to force the main en- 
trance. 

"Just shove them back, sentry," said 
the General. 

The sentry swung his gun around his 
head and through the lane which he 
43 



Leonard Wood 

cleared the General made his way to the 
front door of the club. 

" Now shoot the first man who places 
his foot on that step," the General added, 
in calm and unmistakable Spanish. 
Then he turned and strolled back to the 
Palace. Within an hour the mob had 
dispersed. 

Wood's relations with the people of 
the province were singularly warm and 
friendly. Bewildered by their first ex- 
perience with self-government, the 
Cubans brought him their personal as 
well as their political problems with the 
naive trustfulness of children. 

One morning two nuns came to his 
office from the convent of El Cobre, out- 
side the city. " Your Excellency," they 
said, " our Mother Superior is over- 
worked. But she refuses to take a vaca- 
tion. She has the deepest admiration 
for the work your Excellency has done 

44 



Leonard Wood 

for the poor Cuban people. We want 
you to help us. We thought perhaps if 
you would try to persuade her " 

The General's customary gravity re- 
solved itself into a grin. He was not in 
the habit of exercising the arts of per- 
suasion on Mothers Superior. 

" Tell your Mother Superior," he re- 
sponded, " that, as Governor of Santiago, 
I command her to take a vacation." 

A day later came a note from the 
Mother Superior. " My sisters have 
been altogether too officious. I do not 
need a vacation in the least. But I yield 
to higher authority." 

His position, as Protestant executive 
of a province which was completely 
Catholic, held possibilities of countless 
complications, but he was too human not 
to be broadly tolerant in matters of 
religion, too skilful an administrator not 
to be able to disentangle the most obvious 

45 



Leonard Wood 

of the snarls which Spanish misrule had 
brought into the relations of church and 
state, and too good a diplomat not to 
keep on the best of terms' with the offi- 
cials of the church while he was doing 
it. There was high comedy and a touch 
of farce in more than one situation in 
which the matter-of-fact man in khaki 
was thrust by his mediaeval environ- 
ment. 

It happened that a local priest was 
elevated to the Bishopric of Santiago, 
and as Governor, it was as much the 
General's duty to take a part in the 
ceremonial procession as it was the 
Bishop's duty to attend the high func- 
tions of the temporal authority. The 
streets were black with the crowds which 
had come from miles about, and through 
them, under the Bishop's canopy, walked 
side by side the Catholic prelate and the 
Protestant son of Cape Cod. 

46 



Leonard Wood 

" Thank God, the General is a Catho- 
lic! " went the cry. " We did not know 
it." 

Now the Bishop was old and a little 
feeble and altogether moved to the 
depths. He found that swinging a cen- 
ser with one hand was a wearying occu- 
pation when you were constantly bestow- 
ing benedictions with the other. He 
held it in the Governor's direction with 
an appealing glance. 

The Governor understood and solemnly 
proceeded to swing the censer, looking 
possibly more solemn than he intended to 
look because of the overwhelming temp- 
tation to grin. The Bishop murmured 
words of gratitude. 

The day was very hot and the line of 
march was very long. The Bishop's 
head began to get a little wobbly on his 
shoulders as he bent forward again and 
again to receive the kisses of the devout 

47 



Leonard Wood 

on his episcopal ring. Every time he 
bent forward his mitre would slip to one 
side, and Leonard Wood, with the ut- 
most gravity, would shift the censer 
from one hand to the other as he straight- 
ened the Bishop's hat for him. 

" I thank you, I thank you ! '' sighed 
the Bishop. " I could not keep this 
thing on without you." 

At last the interminable march was 
over. " Thank God, you were with 
me! " exclaimed the old man. " I could 
not have made it if you had not been 
there to help me! " 

" I am afraid I may have shocked the 
sensibilities of some," the General re- 
marked. " From your point of view, you 
know, I am a heretic and bound for 
hell." 

" Tush, tush! " said the Bishop with a 
benign smile, "you are a good Catholic; 
only you do not know it." 

48 



Leonard Wood 

On January ist, 1900, Leonard Wood 
became Governor General of the whole 
island of Cuba. There was a magnifi- 
cent simplicity in the instructions with 
which President McKinley set him to 
work: "To prepare Cuba, as rapidly as 
possible, for the establishment of an inde- 
pendent government, republican in 
form." The details were left to him. 
One wonders whether any man in the 
world's history ever received a larger 
order than that. 

For Cuba — beautiful, chaotic, filthy, 
ignorant, enticing — had not the remotest 
notion of the meaning of self-govern- 
ment. The only government she had 
ever known was the crass despotism of 
the Spanish viceroys and the very word 
was abhorred and held in scorn by the 
Cuban people. Only a small group, 
educated in part in the United States, 
knew anything of the responsibilities of 

49 



Leonard Wood 

citizenship in a republic. The rest were 
as ignorant as savages of even the first 
principles. 

Leonard Wood knew that, to carry out 
his instructions, he would have to accom- 
plish three things — to clean up the Island 
and stamp out yellow fever, to reform 
the judicial system, and inject into a dis- 
illusioned people some respect for the 
orderly processes of law; and, last and 
most important, to create a body of citi- 
zens capable of carrying on the adminis- 
tration of the nation's afifairs. 

The first was a task of science and 
sanitation ; the second, an undertaking of 
clear-headed administration; but the 
third was a labor for Hercules. 

It was characteristic of Wood that, 
having a four-track mind, he embarked 
on all three projects at once and used the 
fourth track for the little matter of re- 
organizing the railroads, reorganizing 
SO 



Leonard Wood 

the postal service, establishing munici- 
palities, drafting a new marriage code, 
settling the century-old question of 
church property appropriated by Spain, 
dredging harbors, building highways, 
and in general constructing, largely out 
of nothing, the intricate machinery of 
modern social and industrial life. 

But all these activities were secondary 
to the three fundamental problems which 
Leonard Wood had been set to solve. 

The cleaning up of the Island was, in 
spite of the frightful conditions in most 
of the towns and villages, a compara- 
tively simple matter, but the yellow-fever 
terror for a time utterly baffled him and 
the scientists he set to work to banish it. 
It was only when the theory that the 
disease was carried in filth gave way 
gradually to the conviction that it was 
carried by the mosquito, that the solution 
of the problem was found. The story 

SI 



Leonard Wood 

of the men who gave their lives volun- 
tarily to prove a theory is a singularly 
heroic and thrilling one. 

Dr. Lazaer, one of the three scientists 
in charge of the research, offered him- 
self as a subject for an experiment for 
the purpose of demonstrating that yel- 
low fever could be transmitted by the 
bite of a mosquito. He was inoculated 
with a mosquito known to be infected, 
took the fever and died. Dr. Carroll, 
another of the three, thereupon offered 
himself, for further experimentation and 
was taken ill with the fever, but recov- 
ered. It was now determined that no 
efforts should be spared to prove the 
theory beyond question. The physicians 
asked General Wood for authority to 
make experiments on human beings and 
for money to pay those who volunteered 
for this unusual service to mankind. 
Wood told them that any money they 

52 



Leonard Wood 

needed would be forthcoming and that 
he himself would assume responsibility 
for the experiments. 

For weeks in the research hospital 
at Havana, men offered themselves for 
experiment, knowing clearly the peril 
they were incurring. One after another 
was taken ill and one after another 
died. For weeks the physicians strug- 
gled from point to point in their 
researches, until at last the secret they 
were after stood revealed. It was a 
great triumph for American science and 
a great triumph for Wood, who had in- 
fused into the little band of heroic men 
his own spirit of enthusiasm and de- 
termination. 

The result was worth all it cost. In 
1 901 the percentage of yellow-fever pa- 
tients in the hospitals of Cuba was 
twenty-nine in every thousand of the 
population. In 1902, on the whole 

53 



Leonard Wood 

Island, there was one solitary case of 
yellow-fever. 

The problem of the judicial system of 
Cuba was intricate in itself and it was 
not made any less intricate by the psycho- 
logical factors which entered into it. 
The code of laws was not bad, but the 
system under which it had been adminis- 
tered by the Spanish viceroys smelled to 
heaven in its rank injustice, with the con- 
sequence that the average Cuban was 
thoroughly convinced that law was an 
instrument of despotism expressly de- 
signed to place the helpless many in the 
grip of the powerful few. He shied 
from the law when he met it. 

Wood went straight to the heart of the 
problem and gave the Cuban respect for 
law by giving him a kind of legal pro- 
cedure for which a human being could 
have respect. He abolished antiquated 
methods; removed, as far as possible, the 

54 



Leonard Wood 

incentive and the opportunity for graft, 
together with the judges and prosecutors 
who had been the most notorious 
grafters; cleaned up the court records, 
reformed the prison system, and sent 
through the courts of the Island the 
word that henceforth the execution of the 
law must be clean and, within human 
limitations, swift. 

The effect was exactly the ef5Fect that 
the advent of intelligent discipline has 
on a roomful of children, confused by the 
pointless and illogical tyranny of a 
domineering pedagogue. The Cuban 
people calmed down almost over night. 
Jangled nerves became quiet in the pres- 
ence of a power that moved justly and 
intelligently without respect for wealth 
or social position. 

Cuba healthy, Cuba clean, Cuba law- 
abiding, Cuba organizing herself to do 
business with an energetic world, made a 
55 



Leonard Wood 

picture that was singularly appealing 
beside the picture of that reeking prison- 
pit which Cuba had been. But Wood 
knew better than any one else that unless 
the fabric he was raising had a solid 
foundation of trained and organized 
public opinion to stand on, it would last 
as long as American troops gave author- 
ity to American ideas, and collapse as 
soon as those troops were withdrawn. 
Out of an ignorant, dependent, supersti- 
tious population, far more closely akin 
to the Spanish peasant of the sixteenth 
century than to the average American 
of the twentieth, he must build a citizenry 
conscious of the responsibilities of self- 
government and sufficiently informed to 
be entrusted with the delicate machinery 
of a modern state. 

There was nothing to build on, nothing 
except the instinctive desire of the aver- 
age human being to live in safety and at 
S6 



Leonard Wood 

peace with his neighbors, and to have 
enough to eat. On this foundation, 
Wood built Cuba's temple of democracy. 

He arranged a constitutional conven- 
tion, appointed a commission to draw up 
an elective law, and, on the theory that 
the only way for the Cubans to learn the 
mechanics of self-government was by ex- 
perience, held municipal elections all 
over the Island within six months after 
he took control. Meanwhile, even while 
he was making the people observe his 
sanitary regulations, he explained to 
them with characteristic patience and 
precision exactly why it was necessary 
that streets and houses should be clean 
and food for babies should be reasonably 
wholesome. There was no need to force 
the new laws upon the Cubans. They 
obeyed them because they were made 
to understand their necessity. 

But Wood knew that the education of 

57 



Leonard Wood 

the adults in the elementary needs of 
modern existence was the merest stop-gap 
in the solution of his problem. He saw 
clearly that what Cuba needed to be a 
successful, self-governing republic was 
a new point of view. That point of 
view was summed up in the words, All 
for each and each for all. 

He knew that the one way to inculcate 
the new spirit in the Cuban people was 
through the schools. With all the re- 
sources at his command, therefore, he set 
to work to build, out of nothing, a public 
school system that would reach the re- 
motest hovel on the Island. For four 
years he spent one quarter of the total 
state revenue of Cuba on the education of 
Cuba's children. When he came, there 
was not a public school on the Island; 
when he ^departed, there were three 
thousand eight hundred. 

Wood knew that a democracy stands 

58 



Leonard Wood 

or falls by the quality of its citizenship ; 
he knew also that good citizenship means 
something more than the ability to read 
and write and figure. He knew that an 
educational system which fails to go be- 
yond book-learning educates, in fact, as 
effectively for civic corruption as it edu- 
cates for civic virtue. He determined, 
therefore, that the book-learning which 
the Cuban child received should be di- 
rected and made vital by definite train- 
ing in the fundamental principles of 
democratic government. 

Under the direction of a Supervisor 
of Moral and Civic Training, who had 
successfully established " school cities " 
in some of the schools of New York's 
East Side, the children were organized 
in each school into miniature city govern- 
ments, each with its mayor and town 
council, its judges, its health officers, its 
police. To this junior government much 
59 



Leonard Wood 

of the discipline of the schools was dele- 
gated; for Wood saw clearly that only by 
giving children responsibility can a sense 
of responsibility be developed. Through 
these children Wood reached the adults 
as he could never have reached them 
with all the proclamations and ordi- 
nances in the world, emphasizing and re- 
emphasizing the fundamental truth, that 
if a democracy is to be successful, its 
citizens must be governed in all the 
affairs of life by the Golden Rule, the 
spirit of friendliness and co-operation, of 
good manners and cleanliness and hon- 
esty and justice and kindness. 

The children responded as to a great 
adventure, and through them, gradually, 
Wood inculcated into a people that knew 
not law, the meaning of government and 
the necessity of submitting to the will of 
the majority. 

It was a tremendous achievement, one 
60 



Leonard Wood 

of the greatest contributions of modern 
times to the advancement of democratic 
ideals. In the dust raised by his more 
spectacular triumphs it passed unnoticed, 
but the steadiness of the Cuban republic 
is a monument to the practical vision of 
the man who taught Cuba citizenship. 

" We have made every effort down 
here not only to give the Cubans a just 
government," said Wood at the close of 
his administration, ^' but to give them a 
government of the kind they fought 
for and for which so many of them 
died." 

He succeeded to a remarkable extent. 
" All conditions were ripe for a period 
of utter anarchy," said Roosevelt at the 
time, " and under a weak, a foolish or a 
violent man this anarchy would certainly 
have come. General Wood, by his 
energy, his firmness, his common sense 
and his moderation, succeeded in work- 
6i 



Leonard Wood 

ing as great an improvement as was 
possible in so short a time. He rendered 
services which if performed three thou- 
sand years ago would have made him a 
hero mixed up with the sun-god in vari- 
ous ways." 

It was Wood's combination of sagacity 
and quick sympathy, of imagination and 
common sense, of firmness and tact, of 
dignity and humor, that made it pos- 
sible for him to advance Cuba in the 
scale of civilization four hundred years 
in four. He was a human being and, 
in consequence, he knew how to live and 
work with human beings. Men trusted 
him, because he always meant what he 
said; because he was resolute; because 
he was " square " ; because he gathered 
about him the ablest men he could find, 
listened to their advice and took it, if 
convinced that it was sound; because he 
played no favorites; because he was 
62 



Leonard Wood 

always working, not for himself, but for 
Cuba; because he was loyal, and be- 
cause he never lost his temper. 

There was a great-hearted humanness 
in all his actions that won him a degree 
of affection among the people that was 
something more than popularity. 

He had a friend among the lesser 
clergy, a little Spanish priest named 
Fernandez, to whom Wood had been 
drawn at first because he was the only 
Spanish priest who had been willing to 
conduct memorial services for President 
McKinley, and whom he came to like 
because of his tireless devotion to the 
poor of Havana and his attractive and 
vigorous personality. He was a dusky, 
thick-set Basque, kindly and courageous, 
distinctly a masculine type after the Gen- 
eral's own heart. In the eyes of the 
world he was among the least of the 
servants of God in Havana. 

63 



Leonard Wood 

It happened, toward the end of 
Wood's administration, that the Vatican, 
in gratitude for the settlement of many 
vexing problems of long-standing be- 
tween the spiritual and secular authori- 
ties in Cuba, desired to express in some 
tangible fashion its appreciation of 
American fair dealing, and through the 
papal delegate in Havana inquired of 
General Wood what form he would like 
the Church's gratitude to take. 

Wood had an inspiration. " The 
parish of Montserrat, the richest parish 
in Havana, is vacant," he said. *^ If you 
want to honor American fair dealing, 
make Emilio Fernandez priest there for 
life." 

From Rome came the answer, ^' It 
shall be as the Governor General re- 
quests." 

Wood himself informed the little 
priest. The man was incredulous. The 

64 



Leonard Wood 

church of Montserrat was the greatest in 
Havana. When he realized at last that 
his good fortune was no dream, he 
begged that General Wood and Mrs. 
Wood be his spiritual sponsors at his 
installation. The General said it was 
impossible. 

" You forget, we are Protestants," he 
said. 

" No one who has been as fair as you," 
the little priest insisted, " can be an 
enemy of Christ." 

Special dispensation was granted, and 
for the first time in church history a 
Catholic priest was led by the hands of 
Protestants thrice around his church to 
his installation. It was General Wood 
who knocked formally on the door of 
the church asking for admission for his 
friend and it was the General and Mrs. 
Wood who finally presented him at the 
altar. 

6s 



Leonard Wood 

The incident was characteristic; and it 
is noteworthy that the little priest " made 
good." He is to-day a Monseigneur of 
the Pope's household. 

Men are by nature hero-worshipers, 
it seems, and the race or nationality seems 
to make little difference. Once they take 
a fancy to one of their leaders, they be- 
come busier than forty gossips in spread- 
ing the word of his superlative qualities. 
It was so with the people of Cuba. 
Once the shyness, the suspicion, the in- 
born antagonism to " the foreigner " 
gave way, first, to respect, then to ad- 
miration, then to affection, stories began 
to fly from mouth to mouth of the Gov- 
ernor's more or less superhuman virtues. 
They were the kind of stories people 
like to hear, stories that amounted to 
little enough in themselves, but that 
showed a wise mind and a large heart. 
The directress of a fashionable girls' 
66 



Leonard Wood 

boarding-school told how the Governor 
had accepted the invitation to her com- 
mencement exercises and had won the old 
Spanish families by going to the trouble 
of coming in gold lace with all his staff, 
knowing that gold lace and ceremony 
were what the school wanted to see. A 
leper in the San Lazaro had a different 
kind of story to tell. 

A visitor to the hospital, wandering 
down a long corridor, came upon him 
where he lay on his cot, white and ema- 
ciated. He told his history, which was 
melancholy enough, filled as it was with 
the horrors of "Unclean, unclean!" 
Then, with a faint light in his eyes he 
pointed to the fresh linen on his bed, 
the polished floors, the walls without a 
spot. 

" It was not always this way," he said. 
" But General Wood sees to it that we 
are cared for now. He comes over here 

67 



Leonard Wood 

and visits us and sits and talks and finds 
out what we want." 

"You mean the Military Governor?" 
exclaimed the visitor, who knew some- 
thing of governors from the Spanish 
days. 

" Why, yes, that is General Wood," he 
answered. " He is a man. He has a 
heart. He tries to help us all he can. 
The food has- not been so good lately. 
I mean to complain to General Wood 
the next time he comes and he will 
change it." 

The Cuban people found Leonard 
Wood a friend at a time when they 
needed, above all, a man with the patience 
and forbearance of a friend. They had 
been clubbed by the Spaniard to the 
point of exhaustion, and any suggestion 
of a rule by force, on the part of the 
rescuer, even temporarily, would have 
driven them to madness. 
68 



Leonard Wood 

^^ He succeeded in organizing our gov- 
ernment," said La Lucha, a leading 
paper of Havana, commenting on Gen- 
eral Wood's candidacy for the Presi- 
dency almost twenty years later, " with- 
out taking a single false step, without 
wounding a single Cuban susceptibility. 
If what Wood did here were better 
known in his own country; if the diffi- 
culties he had to overcome to establish 
the Cuban government were known in all 
their details by those who must elect 
him, the work accomplished by this illus- 
trious man would of itself suffice to make 
him in the eyes of his people one of the 
most farsighted politicians and one of 
the most sagacious executives ever born 
within the territory of the American 
Union. That work as chief executive of 
Cuba is enough to make the reputation 
of a great statesman, of an energetic man 
of inflexible justice and courage, and to 

69 



Leonard Wood 

guarantee the success of his administra- 
tion at the head of the public interests 
of his country." 

Wood sought by his moderation to win 
the confidence not only of the Cubans, 
but of the Spanish loyalists who formed 
an influential part of the population. He 
put the administration of the details of^ 
this government entirely in their hands, 
gradually bringing together the opposing 
groups, by stirring in both an enthusiasm 
for a common ideal. It was a real 
achievement, and by a skilful stroke he 
made the new unity dramatic to the 
people of the Island. On the night of 
the inauguration of Cuba's first presi- 
dent, he persuaded certain members of 
the newly elected Cuban Congress to call 
with him at the Spanish Club, where the 
loyalists were toasting King Alfonso; 1 
and persuaded influential members of 
the Spanish Club in turn to come to the 
70 



Leonard Wood 

inauguration ball and toast the Cuban 
republic. It was an imaginative piece 
of diplomacy that appropriately capped 
four years of government by sympathy, 
sagacity, courage and a sense of humor. 



71 



IV 

**n^HE part played by the United 
g States in Cuba," wrote Theodore 
Roosevelt after his retirement from the 
Presidency, " has been one of the most 
honorable ever played by any nation in 
dealing with a weaker Power, one of the 
most satisfactory in all respects; and to 
General Wood more than to any other 
one man is due the credit of starting this 
work and conducting it to a successful 
conclusion during the earliest and most 
difficult years. General Wood, of course, 
incurred the violent hatred of many dis- 
honest schemers and unscrupulous adven- 
turers, and of a few more or less well- 
meaning persons who were misled by 
these schemers and adventurers; but it is 
astounding to any one acquainted with 
72 



Leonard Wood 

the facts to realize, not merely what he 
accomplished, but how he succeeded (in 
Cuba and later in the Philippines) in 
gaining the good will of the enormous 
majority of the men whose good will 
could be won only in honorable fashion. 
Spaniards and Cubans, Christian Fili- 
pinos and Moros, Catholic ecclesiastics 
and Protestant missionaries — in each case 
the great majority of those whose opinion 
was worth having — grew to regard Gen- 
eral Wood as their special champion and 
friend, as the man who, more than any 
other, understood and sympathized with 
their peculiar needs and was anxious and 
able to render them the help they most 
needed." 

So much for the statesman, combining 
in himself those two essential qualities of 
the highest public service, the ^^ disposi- 
tion to preserve " and the ^' ability to 
improve." 

73 



Leonard Wood 

But what of his qualities of leader- 
ship? Statesmen, even true statesmen, 
perhaps, may be divided into two great 
classes, those who listen for the " voice 
of the people," and hearing it, or seem- 
ing to hear it, express its verdict in laws 
and decrees, irrespective of their own 
judgment of its justice; and those who, 
because of their training and knowledge 
of men and history having a deeper 
vision than most men, courageously strike 
a new course and prevail on their fellow- 
citizens to follow them. 

Is Leonard Wood a human seismo- 
graph, quivering responsive to each dis- 
tant rumbling of popular vagary, or is he 
a leader of men? 

Let us see. 

The great War broke on the conscious- 
ness of the overwhelming majority of the 
American people with a terrific shock. 
But to Leonard Wood it brought no sur- 

74 



Leonard Wood 

prise. He was an old friend of Lord 
Roberts and had a wide acquaintance 
among European soldiers and statesmen. 
He knew that war was in the air and 
he knew that when it came, the United 
States could not remain at the same 
time honorable and untouched. 

He declared in emphatic terms that 
the American people were without ade- 
quate defense to meet the peril that 
might any day confront them. " We 
must prepare!" he cried. 

His appeal met no response. He 
sought to establish experimental military 
training camps for students in their sum- 
mer vacations. He was told that there 
was no money available for such a pur- 
pose. He smiled, set his jaw and set to 
work to create the camps without money. 
He secured permission to use army equip- 
ment on the promise that the War 
Department should incur no expense 

75 



k 



Leonard Wood 

through this exhibition of generosity; and 
instituted camps at Gettysburg and 
Monterey on a voluntary basis, the 
students paying their own expenses. 
This was in 1913. Out of a popu- 
lation of a hundred million, two 
hundred and twenty-two young men re- 
sponded. But those few became apos- 
tles. Wood lived with them, worked 
with them, talked with them. His burn- 
ing sincerity set them afire. They began 
to see the need, and to feel the thrill of 
filling it. They formed an organization 
to promote preparedness. The following 
year there were not two camps but four, 
and seven hundred students attended 
them. Again Wood lived and worked 
and talked with the men, inspiring them 
with a passion for national service they 
had not known before. 

The War broke out in Europe. With 
a deeper anxiety, a deeper fervor, Wood 

76 



Leonard Wood 

called on America to prepare. The great 
bulk of the people were too busy to 
listen, and the Administration too happy, 
where it floated on pacifistic dreams, to 
heed his warnings. Through the press, 
Roosevelt thundered like a prophet of 
Israel, and week in, week out, before 
gatherings large and gatherings small, 
here, there, and everywhere through the 
country. Wood preached the gospel of 
national preparedness with a patriotic 
fervor which had never before burned in 
him with so clear a flame. The youth of 
the country felt it, though their elders 
were callous. Thirty-five hundred or 
more attended the camps at Plattsburg 
and elsewhere that first summer after the 
sinking of the Lusitania. 

Gradually, as German submarines 
brought the War nearer and nearer to the 
heart and conscience of America, Roose- 
velt's magnificent thunderings and 

77 



Leonard Wood 

Wood's restrained but glowing eloquence 
began to have their effect. Here a group 
and there a group, catching fire, formed 
organizations to spread the knowledge 
of the need of national defense. The 
Administration, sensitive to popular cur- 
rents, swung overnight from extreme 
opposition to extreme support. Wood 
took heart. It was only when the Ad- 
ministration, having spoken the grand 
word, let the necessary action evaporate 
in the hands of a war secretary openly 
opposed to all preparedness for war, that 
Wood, unconsulted and unsupported by 
the authorities, once more set forth to lead 
the crusade. 

Sixteen thousand men attended the 
Plattsburg camps during the summer 
that succeeded. All summer long. Wood 
traveled from camp to camp. Present 
or absent, he was the guiding spirit of 
each camp and the inspiration of the men 

78 



Leonard Wood 

who had dropped their business, their 
law, their medicine, to be trained for 
service when the call came. From dawn 
until night he was among the men, in- 
specting, praising, criticizing, directing 
their manceuvers by day, and under the 
stars at night explaining to an eager 
circle the mysteries of military strategy. 
It is difficult to express in cold phrases 
the effect that Leonard Wood had upon 
the men whom he taught and trained in 
the rudiments of armed defense during 
that lowering summer preceding Amer- 
ica's entrance into the War. They were 
not soldiers by inclination; if ever there 
were free citizens arming themselves to 
defend their homes and their liberties, 
these were such. And they followed him 
with whole-hearted devotion because they 
knew that it was to the defense of the 
best they possessed that he was leading 
them. 

79 



Leonard Wood 

It happened one warm September day 
that a company of rookies was reclining 
on a wooded slope in the foothills of the 
Adirondacks. One of them was a small- 
town cynic, a man who neither in spirit 
nor mental attitude seemed to " belong," 
and his comrades had rather wondered 
why he had come at all. 

" I have been studyin' the General," 
he remarked as he mopped his brow. 
" IVe been studyin' him ever since I 
came to this fool place. I have heard 
him talk and I have heard you fellows 
talk about him. Now I always have said 
that no one ever does anything in this 
life except for what he can get out of it. 
So I have been lookin' to see what Gen- 
eral Wood is goin^ to get out of this 
preparedness game he has been workin' 
so hard. And I sure have been puz- 
zled." There was a pause in his solilo- 
quy. Then he added, " He can't get any 
80 



Leonard Wood 

more pay, he can't get any more rank. 
By thunder, I have almost come to the 
conclusion that he is doin' it for his 
country! " 

He was. He had nothing to gain, ex- 
cept the devotion of his countrymen ; and 
he had much to lose. For the Adminis- 
tration scarcely concealed its displeasure 
at his efforts to create a public opinion 
which should demand adequate national 
defense; and more than once his official 
neck was in danger. He continued to 
fight, undeterred. 

The war came to America as he had 
prophesied it would come. One after 
another the plans he had suggested long 
before, while there was yet time, were 
tardily adopted. The men he had 
trained at the Plattsburg camps became 
the backbone of the new great army. 
But for Leonard Wood there came 
neither recognition for the service he had 
8i 



Leonard Wood 

rendered, nor the opportunity to crown 
that service with leadership at the front. 
He appealed for service abroad, but his 
letters to the authorities in power were 
not even acknowledged. '^ Wood ought 
to be court-martialed," a leading member 
of the President's personal entourage was 
heard to exclaim. 

Partly undoubtedly because he had 
advocated preparedness while prepared- 
ness was not looked upon with favor by 
the Administration; partly because he 
was a friend of Theodore Roosevelt and, 
next to Roosevelt, the outstanding figure 
in the opposition, having political possi- 
bilities and an enthusiastic following; and 
partly because he was masculine-minded 
during a period when hazy benevolence 
was accepted by the powers in control as 
synonymous with virtue and an effective 
substitute for training and experience, 
Leonard Wood fared as ill at the hands 
82 



Leonard Wood 

of the Administration as that Adminis- 
tration dared to let him fare, and as his 
extraordinary ability as an organizer al- 
lowed. Successive attempts were made 
to discredit and humiliate him and lay 
him for all time on the shelf. Wood's 
friends chuckled quietly as each attempt 
ended in an extension over a new great 
territory of the suspicion that the War 
Department was playing peanut politics, 
while, with an ability which could not 
be denied, he turned one more effort 
at his destruction into an opportunity to 
do another job well. 

At the very opening of the War, the 
Department of the East, of which he 
was commander, was abolished and he 
was offered his choice of the Philippines, 
Hawaii or — in the disingenuous phras- 
ing of the Secretary's order — " the less 
important post " at Charleston, South 
Carolina. He chose Charleston, where 

83 



Leonard Wood 

there was work to do, and immediately 
set about to establish numerous training 
camps in the southeastern states. It was 
four months later that he received the 
order that placed him in command of the 
cantonment at Camp Funston in Kansas 
and of the forty-five thousand untrained 
and undisciplined young Americans who 
were to constitute the 89th Division of 
the National Army. 

It was not the order that General 
Wood was most eager to receive, but 
the problem it presented was one after 
his own heart. He saw not an army, but 
forty-five thousand individual young 
men who needed guidance and leader- 
ship. And with all that was in him he 
set himself to the task of giving them 
both. 

It was, indeed, in no sense an army of 
which he took command in those first 
days of September, 19 17. The men were 

84 



Leonard Wood 

drafted men from the great agricultural 
states of the Middle West, mainly 
farmers and day-laborers, without physi- 
cal grace or sense of discipline. General 
Wood appealed for uniforms. There 
were none. He bought on his own 
authority forty-five thousand sets of 
blue denim overalls with underwear, 
blankets and comfortables. He appealed 
for rifles. There were none. He set the 
men to work making wooden rifles. He 
appealed for artillery pieces. There 
were none. He set the men to work 
making cannon with wooden breech- 
blocks, projectiles, caissons, set on sleds 
and the running-gear of old wagons. 
It occurred to the men that this was 
rather good fun. 

In their blue overalls with leggins, 
caps and belts and drilling with their 
homemade rifles, the men began to look 
and feel like soldiers. 

85 



Leonard Wood 

Wood was struck from the first by 
their earnestness and sincerity, their evi- 
dent eagerness to do their full duty. It 
was his task, as he conceived it, to keep 
undulled this sense of personal responsi- 
bility and self-respect even while out of 
his forty-five thousand units he built 
his great machine. 

" Never laugh at a man however crude 
he looks," came the order from the 
General's headquarters to the officers of 
the Division. " There isn't a man in the 
Division who does not at heart want to 
do well. Let nothing in your method of 
training or your conduct toward your 
men tend to destroy their own self- 
respect. Remember that these men are 
human beings with ambitions, hopes and 
a hundred changing emotions. Treat 
them as human beings. If they are to be 
real soldiers they must be proud of their 
profession, proud of their officers, proud 
86 



Leonard Wood 

of themselves as soldiers. It is your part 
to see that such loyalty is developed 
and, once developed, that it is up- 
held." 

In an extraordinarily short time the 
spirit of the General began to find its 
reflection in the attitude of the men. It 
was rumored that the General had sent 
out the word, " See that the private gets 
a fair deal; he's the man least able to 
take care of himself," and men who had 
expected militaristic methods began to 
take heart. " He never said a mean 
thing to a man," said one of them after- 
wards, half in awe. He never expressed 
impatience or dissatisfaction in the pres- 
ence of the men. No man ever saw him 
angry. Day in, day out, he was among 
them, as laboriously they passed through 
the first stage of the transition from civil- 
ian to soldier, speaking here a word of 
praise, giving there a word of quiet ad- 

87 



Leonard Wood 

vice, patient, considerate and endlessly 
helpful. 

It happened one day before the 
Division was three weeks old that the 
General, riding about the camp, came 
upon a group of men resting on the 
side of a hill. He stopped to talk to 
them. 

They answered his greeting without 
budging from where they lay stretched 
comfortably on their backs. 

"The sun's pretty hot," remarked the 
General. " Are your undershirts wet? " 

The men "allowed" that they were; 
but did not budge. 

The General's aide was a Southerner, 
with a hair-trigger temper which at that 
point went ofif. " What do you mean by 
lying there? Why don't you stand at 
attention?" 

The General waved him back and as 
his aide subsided, turned quietly to the 
88 



Leonard Wood 

men again. " You don't know who I am, 
do you? " 

The men in blue denim admitted that 
they did not. 

" I am your Division commander, 
General Wood," he said. 

The men scrambled to their feet. " Is 
you Wood?" exclaimed one of them, a 
Kansas farmer boy, with wide eyes. 

The General, with the faintest sug- 
gestion of a smile playing about the 
corners of his mouth, admitted that he 
was. Then, quietly, he talked to them 
of the profession of arms and of a certain 
honorable custom which had come down 
from the days of the knights. ^^ When a 
knight met a friend," he explained, '^ he 
raised the visor of his helmet that they 
might recognize each other as comrades 
in arms; and that is why soldiers salute 
each other to-day." 

The men straightened up and their 

89 



Leonard Wood 

hands flew to their caps. The General 
answered the salute gravely, and rode on, 
and a dozen raw recruits stared after 
him, sharply conscious that they had had 
a memorable experience. 

Wood knew that to many a young re- 
cruit the matter of the salute was one 
of the most galling features of soldiering, 
and he took every occasion he could find 
to make the men understand that there 
was no humiliation in the act. He was 
driving a motor-car along a country road 
one day, when he saw a doughboy, who 
was walking with a girl some distance 
ahead, suddenly bend down as the motor 
approached, and tie his shoe-lace. 

The General stopped the car and 
called the soldier to him. 

"You saw me, didn't you?'' 

The man shuffled about uneasily. 
" Yes, sir," he said. 

" But in order to avoid saluting me," 
90 



Leonard Wood 

the General went on, '^ you pretended to 
tie your shoe-string. That was it, wasn't 
it?" 

Reluctantly the man admitted that that 
was it. 

^^ Now I'll tell you what I would have 
done if I'd been in your place," the 
General remarked. ^' I'd have said to 
my girl, * ]>J.ow watch me make the old 
man take my salute!' Get the point?" 

The soldier saluted. " Yes, sir," he 
said, grinning. 

The General answered the salute with 
marked precision; and drove on. An- 
other soldier had learnt the lesson of the 
interdependence of officers and men 
necessary to make that mass known as an 
army. 

On another occasion a rookie strolled 
up to the General as he was standing 
beside his car. There was no suggestion 
of a salute. 

91 



Leonard Wood 

" How long have you been here? " 
asked the General. 

" Three weeks." 

" Why don't you salute? Don't you see 
that flag on the car? " 

" Oh," said the doughboy with interest. 
" I thought that was your family service 
flag. Say, how long have you been 
here?" 

The General explained. 

"Well, I never! " the soldier ejaculated. 
" IVe got in wrong, ain't I? I want to 
shake hands with you and ask you to 
forget it." 

The General spied a sergeant in the 
background, walking up and down in a 
manner which indicated that things 
would shortly go hard with that particu- 
lar doughboy; and to the General he sup- 
plied the final element of comedy that 
the situation needed. He gravely shook 
hands with the genial youth. 
92 



Leonard Wood 

" It may not have been discipline," he 
remarked afterwards, " but VA have been 
a cad if I hadn't shaken hands with 
him." 

It was inevitable that incidents such 
as these, carried on the lips of awestruck 
boys, should have a wide effect. It 
became known that the General never 
waited for a man to salute him first, and 
soldiers began to brag of " how they beat 
the old man to it." 

Wood's hold on the men became in- 
creasingly firm and sure as stories of his 
efforts for their well-being trickled 
through the Division. He could be seen 
at all hours on horseback or afoot in- 
specting here, examining there, the first 
man out of bed in the morning, beating 
even " reveille," and the last to bed at 
night. Every day he was in the hospital 
wards and his cheerful, '' How are you, 
old man? Getting along all right?" 

93 



Leonard Wood 

addressed to one man or to a dozen 
would echo and re-echo among the cots, 
until men whom the General never saw 
became somehow convinced that they 
had personally felt the warmth of his 
friendly solicitude. 

" Why are the men so fond of 
Wood?" one of his staff officers was 
asked. 

" I'll tell you why," was the answer. 
" Because Bill Smith in the rear rank 
thinks that as far as the General is con- 
cerned, he is the whole Division." 

One day a private who had had a little 
more whiskey than was good for him went 
up to General Wood and said, " Lend me 
two dollars, will you? " 

The General knew the man; he knew 
his record, and it was good. The corners 
of his mouth flickered with the faintest 
suggestion of a smile as he handed him 
the money. 

94 



Leonard Wood 

" Don't forget," he remarked, "you're 
to pay it back." 

The General, with a wide experience 
of soldiers, half seas over, suspected that 
this particular doughboy's intoxication 
was not the kind that swallows the events 
of a night in happy oblivion. He was 
not mistaken. The next day brought re- 
membrance to the doughboy and to the 
General's door an utterly abased and 
humiliated transgressor. 

Again the smile flickered at the corners 
of the General's mouth. " It's all right," 
he said. " Your record was good. And 
you won't do it again." 

The man's face shone; his record had 
been good ; from that moment it became 
distinguished. A flash of human under- 
standing and forbearance had turned 
what might have proved the first step 
toward degradation into a victory for 
manliness and self-respect. 
95 



Leonard Wood 

Wood rode much among the troops, 
talking to the men during their periods of 
rest, keeping the officers human by the 
example of his own humanness, and 
creating among the men a pride in his 
leadership by being the kind of leader of 
whom a man could not help but be 
proud. There was something uncanny 
in the Generars ability to be everywhere 
and see everything. He came, he saw — 
and very shortly after, the officer re- 
sponsible received what he deserved. 
When at night the General found that 
the windows of barracks were shut which 
ought to be open, he did not reprimand 
either privates or company officers. He 
sent next morning for the brigade-com- 
mander involved, found that the windows 
had been shut because the men did not 
have sufficient blankets, and immediately 
filled the lack. A private, hearing one 
officer say to another, '^ The Chief wants 

96 



Leonard Wood 

the boys to have blankets enough," inevi- 
tably came to the conclusion that " the 
Chief " was a man of almost superhuman 
understanding, and was ready to carry 
out orders thereafter before they were 
given. 

" Every man in the 89th Division," 
said a staff officer later, " seemed himself 
to want to do what General Wood 
wanted. The General used to say, 
^ There never yet was a bad regiment, 
but there are plenty of bad colonels.' 
The men seemed to feel that attitude. 
He never scolded them when things went 
wrong, but he gave us officers hell." 

The epidemics of mumps, measles, in- 
fluenza and spinal meningitis which 
swept all the great camps brought misery 
and death to Camp Funston also. 

" In many ways it was worse than a battle," 
Wood wrote of one of the scourges which 
had incapacitated a quarter of the men in the 

97 



Leonard Wood 

cantonment. " But the men behaved splen- 
didly, no absentees, no complaints. The 
discipline was undisturbed. Training went 
on without a hitch and every one was smiUng. 
None of our men are ever in trouble, and 
we have not had a single case of an at- 
tack on women or insulting women. Some- 
how or other we had discipline without hav- 
ing to think about it. Perhaps the reason is, 
that it has commenced with the officers and 
every one has had to do his best." 

" Soldiers will rise to any level set 
for them by their officers," he said at 
another time. " When there is illness or 
other trouble, that's the time for you 
to be there." 

He fought for the lives of his men 
v^ith untiring energy. The great dust- 
clouds which swept the cantonment at 
one time were irritating the noses and 
throats of the soldiers and making them 
sensitive, he knew, to meningitis and 
influenza. He bought hundreds of 

98 



Leonard Wood 

thousands of dollars' worth of crude oil 
and absolutely saturated the cantonment 
site and the adjacent reservation. It was 
a drastic measure, but it laid the death- 
carrying dust. The following spring he 
had the land sown in alfalfa, and the 
dust-borne diseases were stamped out at 
Camp Funston. 

He watched over the men with a 
father's watchfulness. There was some- 
thing glorious to him in the humblest 
doughboy. 

" You are a band of crusaders," he 
said to them, " and when as soldiers you 
kill, you kill only that right may pre- 
vail." 

To him the willingness to sacrifice was 
the essence of the soldier's glory and the 
splendor of the sacrifice to him was the 
same whether death came on the battle- 
field or by disease in camp. No home 
was darkened by the death of a boy 

99 



Leonard Wood 

of the 89th but a personal letter came to 
it from Leonard Wood. He knew that 
in the hearts of many a bereaved father 
and mother was the bitter consciousness 
of a vain sacrifice and out of his own 
conviction he wrote them that their son 
had died as any soldier on the battle- 
field, *^ in the great cause of humanity, 
free institutions and that this country 
may live in security." It was charac- 
teristic of his understanding and sym- 
pathy that, even as he could not think of 
the soldier apart from the human ambi- 
tions and hopes, the attractions and re- 
pulsions of the man within the uniform, 
he could not think of the man apart from 
the human beings who made his intimate 
world. When the War was over, the 
children of every one of his men who 
had died in camp or fallen in France 
received at Christmas a personal letter 
from him. 

100 



Leonard Wood 

" This greeting goes to you," he wrote, 
" with a Christmas remembrance from your 
father's comrades. Although you will espe- 
cially miss his cheerful companionship during 
these holidays, remember he would want you 
to be happy and that he left you the precious 
heritage of his noble example. Always carry 
with you the proud memory of the sacrifice 
which he made for you and his country, and 
try to follow In his footsteps in doing your 
full duty to his country and yours, both in 
War and Peace. 

" Wishing you a Merry Christmas and 
Happy New Year, the kind he would want 
you to have, 

" Sincerely yours, 

" Leonard Wood, 
'* Major General/* 

It is small wonder that the man who 
had it in him to write a letter so tender 
and so full of human sympathy should 
have won the devotion of his men and 
been able, through that devotion, to 
create an army that was a terrific fighting 

lOI 



Leonard Wood 

machine and at the same time an organi- 
zation of independent Americans of ini- 
tiative and resource. He was their com- 
mander, but he was, first of all, their 
leader. They followed him with whole- 
hearted enthusiasm because he had made 
them understand that the way he was 
going was the way that they, in 
their best moments, themselves wanted 
to go. 

To Wood, the training of the 89th was 
a great spiritual adventure to be crowned 
when he led his Division over the top 
under fire. In May, 1918, ^^ Wood's 
Own," as they called themselves, were 
transferred to Camp Mills to prepare 
for embarkation. But it was as 
" Wood's Orphans " that they sailed fof 
France. 

At the last moment. General Wood 
had been relieved of his command and 
ordered to San Francisco. 
102 



Leonard Wood 

It was a tough blow. How tough it 
was appears between the lines of his 
farewell message: 

" I will not say good-bye, but consider it 
a temporary separation — at least I hope so. 
I have worked hard with you and you have 
done excellent work. I had hoped very much 
to take you over to the other side. In fact, 
I had no Intimation, direct or indirect, of any 
change of orders until we reached here the 
other night. The orders have been changed 
and I am to go back to Funston. I leave for 
that place to-morrow morning. I wish you 
the best of luck and ask you to keep up the 
high standard of conduct and work you have 
maintained in the past. There's nothing to 
be said. These orders stand; and the only 
thing to do is to do the best we can — all of 
us — to win the war. That is what we are 
here for. That is what you have been 
trained for. I shall follow your career with 
the deepest Interest — with just as much in- 
terest as if I were with you. Good luck; and 
God bless you! " 

103 



Leonard Wood 

In the face of public indignation the 
order exiling him to idleness on the 
Pacific Coast was rescinded and he was 
ordered back to Camp Funston to train a 
new Division, the loth. 

He went at the work with the same 
zeal with which he had undertaken the 
training of the 89th. No shade of dis- 
couragement weakened his spirit. He 
gave himself to his new army as he had 
given himself to the old, with all the 
devotion, the alert watchfulness, the 
solicitude, the appealing humanness that 
he possessed. The men responded as the 
others had responded, with even greater 
zest, if anything. Their General had 
had a " raw deal," they said. They were 
" damned if they wouldn't make it up to 
him." 

The loth Division never reached the 
fighting line to put their commander's 
training to the ultimate test. But the 
104 



Leonard Wood 

89th did. It went into the line in the 
Toul sector in early August on a front of 
sixteen kilometers with orders to gain all 
possible information about the enemy 
and hold the line while all the Divisions 
massed behind for the attack on St.- 
Mihiel. No identifications had been se- 
cured in that sector for a month. The 
89th went into the line without brigading 
with French troops, dominated No Man's 
Land and secured on an average one 
identification a day. As the preparations 
for the Allied attack developed the 
enemy began vigorous patrols, then raids 
by small groups, then raids by storm 
troops in desperate attempts to secure 
information. The 89th beat off every 
attack, losing not a prisoner nor the body 
of a single soldier that might offer evi- 
dence for identification, but securing in- 
formation itself from each assault of the 
foe. For the great attack, the 89th be- 
105 



Leonard Wood 

came the front-line Division. The ob- 
jective was the key to the German posi- 
tion, a concrete and wire fortification in 
the Bois de Morte Mere, on which the 
enemy had been working for four years, 
and which the French had stormed in 
vain again and again two years pre- 
vious. 

The 89th captured it on schedule, held 
it, reorganized the front and remained 
there, unrelieved, for a month. 

" The report which has come to me 
which has pleased me most," Wood 
wrote to a friend, ^' has been that the 
Division has never been late at an ob- 
jective." 

It never was. 

In the Argonne the 89th fought des- 
perately through the woods to the line for 
the great attack of November first. Here 
again its objective was the key to the 
German position, the heights of Barri- 
106 



Leonard Wood 

court. That night when Marshal Foch, 
grave and taciturn, heard that the heights 
had been taken, he said, " The war is 
over." 

But for ten days more the 89th fought 
on across the Meuse. It was not the 
enemy, only the Armistice that stopped 
them at last. 

Other able soldiers in succession com- 
manded the Division, but in spirit it re- 
mained '' Wood's Own." One night that 
winter, in a small village on the Rhine, 
a staff officer, turning a corner to light 
a cigarette under the protection of the 
overhanging eaves of a peasant's cottage, 
found himself suddenly face to face with 
what looked like an army. 

"What outfit is this?" he asked. 

The answer was quick and proud. 
" This is a Kansas regiment! " 

" Is it a good outfit? " 

"Best in the army!" 
107 



Leonard Wood 

"Why is that?" 

" Bound to be, seeing who is our com- 
mander back home. This is Wood's 
Division 1 " 



1 08 



WHILE Leonard Wood was preach- 
ing preparedness, training civil- 
ians to be officers when the need came, 
and, out of mechanics, farmers and day- 
laborers, shaping soldiers and organiz- 
ing armies, the country he loved and 
served was passing through an experience 
in government that was as new to the 
average hard-headed American as it was 
bewildering; and as terrifying as it was 
in some aspects comic. 

The average American citizen has a 
natural tendency to respect and trust the 
Administration which a majority of his 
fellow-citizens places in control of the 
Federal government, even though he him- 
self may not belong to that majority. 
Once elected, the President becomes to a 
109 



Leonard Wood 

certain extent dissociated in his mind 
from the party which elected him, the 
leader not only of Democrats or Repub- 
licans, but of the whole American 
people. He is inclined, even in parti- 
san controversies, to give the President 
the benefit of the doubt. He recognizes 
the difficulties under which the Presi- 
dent labors; he recognizes also the ex- 
istence of sources of information open to 
the President only, which give him the 
right to demand that he be not judged 
by superficial appearances. ^' Stand by 
the President!" is a slogan that has a 
firm hold on the American consciousness, 
especially in matters relating to foreign 
policy. It is an expression of the Ameri- 
can's real love of fair play. When he 
feels that this fundamental impulse has 
been imposed upon, he has a way of 
'^ seeing red." 
The remarkable operations of the 
no 



Leonard Wood 

mind of the Wilson Administration af- 
fected the average American curiously. 
At first he was puzzled. He saw the 
Administration go to war with Mexico 
and at the same moment proclaim its 
friendly relations with that state; and 
the situation struck him as odd. He 
heard it condemn the German govern- 
ment in a sharp note, threatening war if 
certain things happened ; the things hap- 
pened, and the Administration backed 
out of its threat. 

He began to get his bearings. 

The Administration was against war 
under any circumstances, he said to him- 
self, and though he suspected that the 
point of view was mistaken, he agreed 
that there were arguments in its favor. 
He heard the Administration shortly 
after preach non-interference in the af- 
fairs of small nations, and he acknowl- 
edged certain merits in the doctrine; but 
III 



Leonard Wood 

when the President promptly thereupon 
landed marines in Santo Domingo to take 
over the government of that unruly re- 
public, he saw both pacifism and non- 
interference go by the boards and became 
bewildered. The Lusitania was sunk; 
and in the exalted mood of the days that 
followed, he would have struck the man 
who criticized the President; but the 
President said '''' Too proud to fight,^' 
and his blood began to boil. The first 
Lusitania note brought back the glow 
of pride, but the second and third made 
him, he did not know altogether why, 
slightly ashamed. He was dimly aware 
that some one was trying to prove to him 
that the traditional way of handling dis- 
agreements between nations was out of 
date; that firmness and vigor were, in 
some way that he did not quite under- 
stand, immoral; and that the men who 
advocated them were reactionary militar- 

112 



Leonard Wood 

ists. Puzzled and unhappy, he wondered 
whether he too were a reactionary; and 
decided to keep an open mind. After a 
while he seemed to see light. The Ad- 
ministration was definitely pacifistic, he 
said to himself. But suddenly, it was 
calling for '' incomparably the greatest 
navy in the world." In his joy at the 
sudden appearance of masculinity in 
what seemed to him the curiously femi- 
nine reactions of the Administration he 
did not object to a reversal of policy. A 
few months later, to his astonishment, 
the President was running for re-election 
on the issue of peace-at-any-price, but a 
month after his second inauguration the 
country was at war. 

The citizen who liked logic and con- 
sistency in the conduct of public affairs 
watched the performance with the dizzy 
sensations of a recruit in the midst of 
an aviation test. He heard the Adminis- 
113 



Leonard Wood 

tration call on the very infants to ^' help 
win the war " and refuse participation 
to a human dynamo worth an army in 
himself; he heard it preach democracy, 
until men wearied of the word, and prac- 
tise autocracy as ruthlessly as a czar; 
preach co-operation and refuse to co- 
operate; appeal for publicity and clear 
thinking, and govern by smoke-screen or 
by Aladdin's lamp. He heard the Ad- 
ministration ask for a vote of confidence, 
and proclaim its intention to abide by the 
popular verdict; he saw the vote of con- 
fidence refused by the people and heard 
the Administration declare that it had the 
country at its back. 

The American of the old tradition felt 
his head reel at the bewildering welter of 
insincerities and contradictions and irides- 
cent nebulosities through which the Ad- 
ministration seemed to dodge back and 
forth like a greased pig, too swift and 
114 



Leonard Wood 

slippery for human hands to clutch. He 
saw it reprove Japan in an ultimatum 
that implied war, and without debate, 
concur in Japan's desires; he saw it 
defend China in words and betray her 
in action; he saw it go to war with 
Russia, a power with which it declared 
itself to be at peace, and petulantly in- 
sist on making peace with Bulgaria, a 
power with which it had never been at 
war. He heard it preach open diplo- 
macy, with the air of Adam discovering 
virtue, and saw it practise the ancient 
ways of Machiavelli in a manner as 
unashamed as it was inept. In America 
he heard it prophesying world-disaster 
if a comma of its treaty were removed; 
in France, he heard the same voice 
sauvely rejoicing over the changes 
" which the publication of the treaty had 
so fortunately brought forth." 

Devious and strange beyond human 



Leonard Wood 

comprehending were the workings of the 
Administration's intellectual processes to 
the citizen who had been taught in a 
school where two and two made neither 
rabbits nor roc's eggs, but four. Like a 
prestidigitator, diverting the attention 
of his audience with a meaningless rig- 
marole while he pretends to turn omelets 
into singing-birds and silk hats into 
Bengal tigers, he saw the Administration 
play with the American people, relying 
for success, it seemed, partly on the 
swiftness with which, in the mad suc- 
cession of events, the individual act is 
blurred and forgotten, partly on that 
fundamental principle of the profession 
that " the hand is quicker than the eye." 
He saw the Administration shake its 
finger at labor and, behind a screen of 
many words, yield to its demands; he 
saw it shake its fist at the profiteers, and 
behind a wall of newspaper headlines, 
ii6 



Leonard Wood 

leave them unhampered to exact the last 
drop of blood ; he heard it flatter the pub- 
lic with unctuous phrases, and quietly 
throw it to the wolves, since it possessed 
no organization which needed to be pro- 
pitiated. He heard it preach law and 
order even while it flirted with the very- 
elements that were undermining law and 
order; and even while it fanned the 
flames of anarchy he saw it turn and 
annihilate the deluded anarchist. All 
this he heard and saw, bathed in an at- 
mosphere of moonshine and Sweet- 
Sixteen-about-to-remake-the-world, veil- 
ing a singular vindictiveness and untrust- 
worthiness; a flea-like agility to shift 
position just at the instant that annihila- 
tion impends; a shrewd wariness, ex- 
pressed in half-truths and half-measures 
— the evil cause never more than half 
opposed, the good cause never more than 
half supported; a willingness to com- 
117 



Leonard Wood 

promise on principles and unalterable 
firmness only where personal pride was 
involved. 

The citizen who loved truth more than 
self-delusion watched the strange tragi- 
comedy, bitterly resentful at what 
seemed the almost fatal departures from 
American policy, the delays, the evasions, 
the inability to face facts, which were 
costing the nation thousands of lives and 
billions of dollars; yet grimly amused 
at the echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan 
that dodged in and out among the tragic 
chords. There seemed a cherubic dis- 
regard for realities about the Adminis- 
tration as fantastic as a pantomime; and 
an elusiveness and intangibility about 
its policies as heart-breaking as the with- 
drawings and returnings, the prodigious 
approaches and sudden dissolutions of 
the shapeless figures of a fever-dream. 
He bitterly resented the vague threats, 
ii8 



Leonard Wood 

the vague promises, the vague intima- 
tions of upheaval, the altogether vague 
remedies which were disrupting labor, 
distracting capital, making the whole 
people restless and discontented, and 
benefiting only the agitator and the 
profiteer; but in his hottest resentment no 
American with any laughter left in him 
could altogether miss the gorgeous and 
colossal humor in an appeal for self- 
determination of all peoples and all ra- 
cial groups abroad, by the leader of a 
party whose dominance depended on the 
rigid disfranchisement of the negro at 
home; or the high comedy of a leader- 
ship which fought one presidential cam- 
paign in defense of America's solemn 
duty to keep out of European quarrels, 
and proposed to fight the next in defense 
of her even solemner duty to get into 
them. 
Leonard Wood, doing his work at 
119 



Leonard Wood 

Plattsburg and Governor's Island, at 
Charleston and Camp Funston and Chi- 
cago, was too good a soldier to comment 
on the Administrative actions or inac- 
tions of his superiors; but he v^as too 
good an American citizen not to feel a 
deep uneasiness at the unsteady course of 
the Ship of State, the veering to and 
fro, and the flapping of idle sails where 
she lay in the wind, now and again jibing 
violently, only to return to her dangerous 
inertia, while the helmsman debated with 
himself backward and forward whether 
to lay her over to starboard or to port. 

He said nothing; but the record of his 
own administration in Cuba gives more 
than a hint of the emotions that seethed 
behind his tight-closed lips. It is not 
difficult to guess what the man, whose 
first act as Governor of Santiago was to 
give unlimited freedom of criticism to 
the press, thought of a censorship which 
1 20 



Leonard Wood 

ideritified opposition to the Administra- 
tion with treason against the government, 
or what one, who had found his greatest 
strength in open dealing and in careful 
explanation of every step he had made, 
thought of the Administration's deliber- 
ate secretiveness and apparently studied 
efforts to blur issues and confuse the 
public mind. Wood, as governor, seek- 
ing to reorganize the railroads of Cuba, 
had chosen the two most experienced men 
available in America and England to 
supervise the work; revising the Cuban 
code of law, he had turned for counsel to 
the Chief Justice of the United States; 
fighting yellow fever, he had called to 
his assistance the wisest scientists he 
could find. He knew that notable work 
can be done only through notable men; 
and it is not hard to imagine his reaction 
to the timid reluctance to match minds 
with the best, which laid the problems of 

121 



Leonard Wood 

a dangerous war and a difficult peace 
into the fumbling hands of mediocrities. 
He knew from personal experience that 
the business of government is like any- 
other great business and must be organ- 
ized by departments, under department 
heads responsible to the general manager, 
the President or governor as the case 
may be. He knew that in the govern- 
ment, as in industry, any attempt by the 
executive to override the heads of de- 
partments must end in administrative 
chaos and that the machinery of govern- 
ment can run smoothly only when the 
executive appoints trustworthy subordi- 
nates and trusts them to handle the work 
allotted them. He knew that prosperity 
and general well-being demand recipro- 
cal confidence beween the government 
and the public, expressed in open deal- 
ings. He knew that questions involving 
labor demand such open dealing above 

122 



Leonard Wood 

all, even to the establishment of special 
commissions for the purpose of investi- 
gating disputes between employers and 
employees and publishing their findings 
for the information and instruction of 
the public. He knew, from his own ex- 
perience, not only in Cuba, but in the 
Philippines and in the Army, that no dif- 
ferences between individuals or organi- 
zations are ever settled by concessions at 
variance with justice; that the first es- 
sential of any settlement is knowledge of 
the facts involved, the second, mutual 
trust, the third, firmness on fundamental 
principles and a spirit of conciliation on 
details. Knowing these things it is not 
hard to guess how bitterly he resented the 
Administration's uncertain and cloudy 
relations both with capital and with 
labor, the secret conferences, the hazy 
admonitions, the impressive generaliza- 
tions, the total lack, at critical moments, 
123 



Leonard Wood 

of detailed plans and the consequent lack 
of trust on the part of capital, labor and 
the public in the government or any of 
its works. 

What Wood was thinking during these 
years of vacillation and mental confusion 
remains Wood's secret. He did not 
speak. He did not have to. Roosevelt 
was alive. 

Roosevelt's death brought him a 
double shock. They had been warm and 
intimate friends, who had stood side 
by side in the two great adventures of 
their lives, the romance of the war with 
Spain and the glory of that graver war- 
fare when they fought the inertia of a 
people lulled into forgetfulness of duty; 
and forced a hostile Administration to 
take the course which they laid down. 
They were both great fighters, both 
" clean as a hound's tooth," both most 
human in their wide sympathies with all 
124 



Leonard Wood 

manner of men, eager for counsel and 
quick and steady in judgment; above all, 
both masculine-minded, having the cour- 
age to tell the unpopular truth. When 
Roosevelt died, it v^as Wood's battle- 
partner that went. 

But Roosevelt's death brought to 
Wood a shock besides the shock of per- 
sonal loss. He found the eyes of thou- 
sands who had looked to '^ the Colonel " 
for leadership now fixed on himself. 

"We run with the torches until we 
fall," Roosevelt had said, '^ content if we 
can then pass them to the hands of other 
runners." 

Gradually, as month has succeeded 
month and the Presidential election has 
drawn near. Wood has become the focus 
of the hopes of an increasing number of 
men and women scattered over the coun- 
try who have found in him a symbol 
of that blunt belief in facts, that respect 
125 



Leonard Wood 

for training and experience, that love 
of open dealing, which the Administra- 
tion has offended, and that traditional 
Americanism which in subtle ways it 
has sought to set aside as old-fashioned. 
It is not strange that countless Americans, 
angered at the lack of these qualities in 
the Administration, should seek to make 
the man who most patently possesses 
them, the instrument of their indignation. 



402 



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